The backstory to Sir John Hall’s eventual takeover of the club is one of bitter feuds and a four-year battle for control - with The Magpie Group at its very centre.

Three decades on from The Magpie Group’s formation, NUFC Writer Chris Waugh caught up with six of the prime movers behind the move to democratise the football club - and seize control from former chairman Gordon McKeag, who infamously referred to his Newcastle shares as his “family silver”.

Here, in the third of a four-part series on The Magpie Group and how Sir John Hall came to own Newcastle United, Malcolm Dix, Peter Ratcliffe, John Waugh, Alan Rooney, Sir John Hall and The Chronicle’s John Gibson explain to Chris Waugh about the cloak-and-dagger nature of the share war...

From 1988 onwards, Sir John set about acquiring shares in Newcastle. Having originally made it clear he did not want to buy the club, he eventually came to the conclusion someone needed sole control.

But McKeag and the other board members were unwilling to reform and did not want to relinquish their share.

As a result, a two-year ‘share war’ ensued - which The Chronicle decided to put their weight behind the campaign with a bold logo showing a disgruntled Magpie alongside the words: “After 35 bleak years why are we waiting?”

John Waugh (JW): “The share wars brought plenty of drama. There was pure, vicious nastiness from the board’s side - and we used what you might call ‘under-hand tactics’ at times as well.

John Gibson (JG): “I was used as a go-between throughout the whole thing. meeting up with certain directors for unofficial talks. It was like a spy novel - for example, at one meeting at a private house I was taken into the kitchen at a critical point during negotiations and the cold water tap was turned full on so that if I was wired voices could not be clearly heard!”

Malcolm Dix (MD): “There was always a fear we were being bugged.”

Alan Rooney (AR): “I remember at a meeting at our HQ in the MetroCentre once, an ashtray fell on to the floor and broke, and there was a bug in it. It wasn’t the board’s though - it was from people who were on our side! That’s how security conscious we were!”

Peter Ratcliffe (PR): “That ‘family silver’ comment from McKeag riled us all, and particularly John Hall. Newcastle is a football club for the fans - it wasn’t McKeag’s to keep hold of at any cost and run into the ground.

Sir John Hall (SJH): “I’d tried to encourage supporters to buy shares in the club in 1988, but they didn’t trust the board - and I know why. We ended up with a fractured board who disagreed with one another, so I turned around and said: ‘This is nonsense. Someone has to have control here, or this is going nowhere.’ So we decided to do the takeover of the club, and that was when Malcolm and the rest of the Magpie Group - who operated out of the old dining room at Wynyard Hall - went all over the country buying shares and making it. I said to them: ‘There’s the money, go out and buy the shares.’ They travelled everywhere buying the shares.”

Hunting for shares - all over the country

The problem The Magpie Group faced was that the original 2,000 shares had been passed down through generations.

Some lay with board members, while others had passed down to disinterested supporters - or even to some people who did know they held shares.

Ingeniously, Fraser and Fraser - a professional team of genealogists who feature on the TV programme Heir Hunters - were called in to trace the shares.

As a result, members of The Magpie Group - primarily Ratcliffe and Trevor Scott - journeyed around the country to places as far afield as King’s Lynn, Soho, Edinburgh and even the Isle of Wight in their quest for shares.

Sir John was supplying the cheques, The Magpie Group were finding the shareholders in order to increase their stake.

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AR: “Keeping John on side was key though - if he’d lost his bottle, then the whole thing would have collapsed - and Gibbo was essential to that.”

JW: “I can’t tell you how many times I had to ring Gibbo and say: ‘I’m going to pick you up, we’ve got to get to Wynyard.’ John was ready to go on at least four or five occasions, but I knew that if I got Gibbo in there then John would think: ‘Oh Jesus, I’m going to have a nasty piece written in the paper tomorrow if I don’t stick at it.’ And it worked – he never pulled out, did he?”

MD: “Gibbo might not admit it, but he was very much part of the Magpie Group even though he was an independent journalist.”

JG: “We always say Keegan was always on the verge of resigning, well John was always on the verge of throwing it in during those early stages.”

PR: “But John did stick at it, and his driver took me around the country to do the deals. We were getting them one by one.”

JW: “The very first shares we bought on the first day were for about £200. Gibbo got an article on it, and that was day one of buying the shares.”

AR: “Fraser and Fraser once gave me shareholder’s name and they gave me his telephone number; just three digits. I said: ‘No, get me the real number.’ They then said: ‘Ring the number!’ I rang that number every day for six months and then one day it answered – I nearly s*** myself! He was a retired person in the wilds of Wales which is why the number only had three digits. This guy was a descendant of the family that were in control when the club in the 1920s and had inherited another four shareholdings from other family members he didn’t know about. I didn’t tell him, but I asked him if he was willing to sell. He said: ‘That depends on how much.’ So I told him, and excitedly said: ‘Can you meet me in Manchester Airport today, I’ll be there with my solicitor?’ I headed straight across. The guy was there, his face when I gave him the cheque – he was absolutely astounded. Then I said: ‘I have a little surprise.’ Then I got out the next cheque. The smile on his face must have stayed on for years.”

MD: “John Waugh got the single-largest shareholder George Dixon too. He literally camped at their house for two days.”

JW: “George was a supporter, he really was. When we bought him out, two days later we had a midweek match at St James’ and George stood in the Gallowgate. It was p***ing down with rain but he went and stood in the rain, even though he’d been a director. He was furious with McKeag for how he acted during that time. He’d told me he had to offer his shares to McKeag, knowing full well we were going to get them because McKeag couldn’t afford them. McKeag was so arrogant and nasty with George – who was a mild-mannered man – and he told me: ‘I almost punched him.’ “

MD: “It was a coup d’etat that one. It took us over the line that one. But I was the Westwoods. I had a big battle with Lord Westwood and he was the one who was always having a go at me in the media as some sort of trumped-up fella or something. So it gave me immense personal satisfaction that through his son, Gavin, after a few gins and tonics at his house in Gosforth, he gave me his 25 shares, plus he had the power to give me his father’s and his brother’s. That was satisfying.”

Upping the ante

Yet even when Sir John had acquired enough shares to assume de facto control, The Magpie Group did not relent.

McKeag was still reluctant to relinquish control, so The Magpie Group continued to offer inflated prices for shares, knowing full well the chairman would then have to pay over the odds.

On one occasion, a single share ended up costing £7,500 - and, by the time Sir John assumed control in November 1991, it is predicted that McKeag spent more than £3million acquiring shares.

Sir John spent a similar amount with his initial takeover of the club too - but eventually, after a bitter four-year ‘share war’ which saw under-hand tactics from both sides, The Magpie Group had wrestled control from the board.

From that point on, the club was able to flourish - and the Entertainers would eventually be born.

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AR: “John [Waugh], Malcolm and Peter had to really up the ante at one stage and start going round buying the shares for very-inflated figures. They’d already rejected a previous scheme I’d suggested which would have cost little more than £1million. John could have bought the club there and then [in 1988], but he rejected it because he said: ‘I’m not putting money in the shareholders’ pockets.’ But in the end he had to put a lot more than that in their pockets!”

MD: “There were occasions when we were upping the ante on the shares just to get at the other side, we didn’t really need to. We were already past the winning post and yet we got them to still bid higher...”

JW: “There were certain aspects that you would never go and ask John. I used to go and ask Douglas [Hall, Sir John’s son], and Douglas would always agree. I said to Douglas: ‘Let’s make them run out of money. Let’s keep putting the price of the shares up.’ John has high morals and he would have been furious, but Douglas said: ‘Go and do it.’”

MD: “‘Go for the jugular’, that was Douglas’ favourite expression. So we did. And we won out in the end.”

SJH: “I just let the lads go off and do it. They were the driving force - I just provided the money, they did all the work. It is them who fans should really be thankful to.”

* In the final section of our four-part series on The Magpie Group we will take a look at the legacy of The Magpie Group and the onset of The Entertainers.